Retreating Light

You were always very young children,
always waiting for a story.
And I’d been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper.
I gave you pens made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.

After all those years of listening
I thought you’d know
what a story was.

All you could do was weep.
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.

Then I realized you couldn’t think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn’t had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools alone weren’t enough.

You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.

Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.

BLACKBERRIES

When the woods were green
And the air was clear
And the sky was mottled
With fluffy clouds,

When the river was high
And the water was clean
And fish hid in the shadow
Of submerged rocks,

When the cars were small
And the traffic slow
And wild blackberries
Grew by the roadside,

You were my love
And I was yours
And everything
Was shining bright

The scenes have changed
And so have we, but
love has never faltered
And every day still shines as bright
As when we picked blackberries.
         ljm

Lost - reality in multicolor shatters
Scattered by the breezes from the sunrise
Gaping holes with ragged edges
Filled with swirling mists of sadness

Perusing maps of certainty
The tick-tock of the day grows louder
But the tide washed out the roadway
And the darkness didn’t leave at dawn

There is no clay for making bricks
So nothing will get built today
And the penny found along the walk
Will only buy a feckless dream

A can of worms not good for fishing
Sits atop a dusty shelf above
A dog that wants more petting
Than you or I have hands to give

The echo of this joylessness is deafening
And there’s no reason to go on.
      ljm

This is the time of the
Cleansing
Where audacity
And hypocrisy
Comes to the light
Though many will stay in the dark
Insisting that they are right
They will be the *****
Among the clean
Convinced their filth
Is pure and pristine

When offered the gift
of myself, I no longer
seek the return desk.